Tatiana Calderón was left to rue more bad luck in last weekend’s NTT IndyCar Series race at Mid-Ohio, as a mechanical issue brought an early end to a promising run.
The Colombian driver had made solid progress at the wheel of her No. 11 ROKiT-backed AJ Foyt Racing Dallara-Chevrolet to move up into the top 20 at the flowing Lexington, Ohio road course, only for gearshift troubles to strike.In the end, she had to pull off course at Turn 4 on lap 51 of 80, leaving her classified 25th.
Visiting a circuit that she knew already for the first time this year, Tatiana was confident of a strong showing heading into her seventh IndyCar appearance of her 12-round schedule, steadily improving her pace in practice on her way to 26th place on the grid.
Showing good pace on her soft-compound ‘red’ Firestone tires, Tatiana was able to produce her most consistent drive of the year, and appeared on course to challenge for her best finish of the season so far in a turbulent race that saw many experienced drivers go off-course.
The gearshift issue that took her out of the race was a cruel way for her run to end, but Tatiana can at least take satisfaction in showing how much progress she has made since the start of the season in America’s top single-seater series.
Tatiana Calderón: “We were having a good time out there. We started on reds [soft tyres] and pitted for another set of reds and the car was feeling actually quite good. So we were in the mix I think, had good pace, and then we started to have some delays on the downshifts. We need to figure out what happened. It was just stuck in first gear out of Turn 2 and sadly that was the end of theday. But I think the team did a great pitstop, the strategy was the right one, so it’s a shame we couldn’t finish a good race, but that’s racing sometimes.”